dkonofalski

There are plenty of ways someone could expand their horizons and develop a hobby in VR that doesn’t involve or require them to do any of that.

This is just as true of paid, closed source software. And when it gets abandoned, you can't fix it if it's important to you.

It's not true of most paid, closed source software, though, while it is true for most open source software. At least in the former, the money people pay for the software directly contributes to its longevity and sustainability.

Capitalism can't even solve normal problems in the way you're suggesting. How in the world would it solve any of these problems?

What's to say (and who are you to say) that a VR headset may not broaden someone's horizons, though?

...and get none of the benefits of it.

This is like saying "for the price of car, you could buy 20,000 bicycles". While that's true, I'm not going to ride my bike from Texas to Disneyland.

Yeah. They're wrong. I've been playing 3D SBS videos from my collection since I got the AVP.

Isn't that a little naive and idealistic, though? I love FOSS software as much as the next HN user but, for the vast majority of it, it only does the most basic tasks possible and, with few, rare exceptions, gets abandoned or obsoleted when the developers decide that it's not worth their time to work on it anymore. The market can't and won't solve every issue/need/deficiency that people have and, even with your example, the number of issues that every single one of those desktop replacements had dwarfed most of the benefits that using them had. For the vast majority of people that aren't tech nerds like us, the "locked down system" is preferable because it gives an incredibly consistent, polished experience for 99% of the use cases people need it for at the expense of the ability to customize it to your heart's content.

It's the same situation as the loss of headphone jacks and removable batteries. Some of us care deeply about those things but, antithetically to the point you've made, the market has decided that those things are no longer important to the vast majority of people.

This is factually inaccurate. It doesn't stop working in a moving car or train. The reviewers/users that were using it in those instances simply didn't turn on the Travel mode of the device. In order for the 3D windows to persist, they need tracking data. Travel mode disables the external tracking and leaves it as internal. It's less accurate but it's completely usable in a moving vehicle.

Your VR enthusiast is wrong. The issue he's describing was because of the two video players that launched in the App Store. There are video players for the AVP that can play stereoscopic video without issue.

The intake form asks for certain things (like prism vision) and it also asks if you know your prescription ahead of time. I can't imagine that they'll have all of those specific fixes but, for the majority of people, you can simply go in and get the right prescriptions lenses. They even email you a link to get your specific prescription of lenses after the demo.

Apple has the prescription lenses in the stores. If you bring your glasses, they have a device that will shine some lights through your glasses to determine your prescription and pop out the correct lenses needed for the Vision demo.

Thanks for that. That was a great read. It's really interesting to see a perspective from someone that understands that the current state of systems came from years and years of intentionally working within a paradigm and that changing regulations rarely, if ever, consider that paradigm. It really does fundamentally break the "brand promise" as he calls it.

My only hesitation with these rules is that I feel like Apple, as a business, has a right to do whatever they want with their business so long as there are alternatives and I do consider Android to be a viable alternative. I wouldn't want the government forcing my business to do anything that I felt devalued my brand or my product so I do understand the "maliciousness of their compliance".

Let's say that I created some kind of device, not as complex as a phone, but something that was like a little portable video game system or something. If the government can tell Apple that they have to allow third-parties to be able to do whatever they want to these devices, then it may hurt my business if third-parties don't have the same standards of quality as I do. Apple's standard is really, really high (insanely high by some accounts) and I feel like mine is too.

That's the only reason that I would oppose this type of legislation. The people complaining about Apple's behavior are the people that have become successful off of Apple's ecosystem and customer base. They want the benefits of having access to Apple's highly curated customer base without the downsides of having to develop and foster is themselves. It feels entitled in a way that I only begrudgingly support because of Apple's size and resources. If it was any other large corporation, I'd feel the same way. I wouldn't feel this way about any regular company, though. I would be rallying against the governance.

This isn't a summary. You basically removed all the positive things he had to say and just left the negatives. That's not what a summary is.

You’re discussing this in the context of a case that deemed that it wasn’t an anti-trust violation because it was determined Apple doesn’t have a monopoly, though. They’re not considered their own markets.

I’m not the one pretending. You’re pretending like people don’t have a choice in what phones they buy. They do.

I think you're conflating their designation as "markets" because they are marketplaces of apps with the economic term "markets" which has a specific definition for a sector of industry.

That's irrelevant. Both iPhone users and app developers have options on both sides. Developers can ignore Apple's platform and end-users have lots of options for phones that aren't iPhones.

You're not forced to make apps for iOS or any Apple product. Making your app for the second most popular OS is acceptable because that's what iOS is. I know you tried to make it seem like Android is but, worldwide, Android is far more popular than iOS. The fact that there even is a 2nd most popular mobile OS proves that Apple doesn't have a monopoly.

They're not in a position where they could have standing, though, since they were in that position and violated the terms of their agreement. The judge has not ordered Apple to reinstate Epic's account and the termination was found to be legal.

How are they even going to attempt to enforce compliance.

Per the judge's own words, Apple is allowed access to the company's financials and other information that would allow them to audit developers' use of third-party payment systems.

Yes, you do. You have the choice to put your App on Google Play or host it yourself and make it available for Android.

iOS is not a market segment. Smartphones is the segment and so you do have a choice. The courts have already ruled that Apple doesn't have a monopoly in their segment.

That's not true in the slightest, though. Sony, Microsoft, Nintendo, and Steam all take 30% for distribution and hosting, same as Apple. It's not artificially high if it's in line with the rest of the tech industry and if you want to try and claim that it's because of some monopoly, vertical or otherwise, then you have to explain why the other storefronts are also monopolies.

It's not a monopoly. Other phones and ecosystems exist.

No one gives a crap about your pedantry. I never said anything about "legally stealing". They took something that didn't belong to them and that they didn't have permission to give to someone else or copy. That's theft. It's stealing.

Loss of data is irrelevant. If you don't have permission to take something or copy it, then you're stealing. Again, I think the benefits of what happened in this case are obvious so I'm not arguing the morality of this. I just think it's absolutely silly that people are bending over backwards to pretend that this isn't stealing and that the reason we have something that would have been otherwise lost is because someone had to balls to steal it.

It's stealing. You're taking something from the owner without permission. Just stop with the mental gymnastics.

Having access to it is not the same as having permission to take it, make copies of it, or remove it or its copies from the owner.

You're taking something that doesn't belong to you and copying it. It's stealing. In order to even make the "unauthorized copy" you mention, you have to take the thing first. That's the stealing.

Can we please stop with the mental gymnastics? Taking something without permission that doesn't belong to you is stealing. It may be justified stealing but it's still stealing.

That's partially because of web security, though, if I'm not mistaken. I have an old Windows PC and an old Mac mini that I use as servers and, outside of local stuff that's bridged to the outside network (and heavily crippled), I can't do much on them because of the changes to the TLS protocol for SSL certs. That means that the browsers won't connect to most modern servers, any apps that hardcoded instances of TSL can't connect to the internet, and, if I managed to get something to connect, it would be a huge security risk for anything on those machines.

So, if the connection is being shut down on the server side, it's likely because of the TLS version mismatch. I thought it would be a simple solution just via updated software but was told (by peeps on Reddit, so it's likely to be total nonsense) that, although it can be updated, it won't run reliably on older hardware unless that hardware can also support newer OSs. Win7 and below (?) don't support it and MS won't provide updates with it and MacOS versions before Lion don't have it. I've heard you can also update OpenSSL by breaking the symlinks to the OS's install and get it working again but that's more hassle than I cared to put in.

Also, most of those old iPads are able to be jailbroken. You can update OpenSSL on them and probably get Spotify working again.